


Chiron

by Lily_Dragon



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Genre: Angst, As is expected, Dimension-Hopping Rose, Doctor Who x Dr. Horrible crossover, Gen, but angst that leads to a better understanding, shameless use of symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 17:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6965572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily_Dragon/pseuds/Lily_Dragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Her name was Penny, and she was the most gullible person in the Multiverse. Auburn hair, thin and pale, and big bright eyes shining with empathy, as if she wanted to cure all the sadness in the world with a blanket and warm soup. She brought a stranger into her house. She dragged an unconscious stranger home. She had let an unconscious armed stranger sleep on the same space as her. And she had absolutely no idea because she didn’t even bother to check Rose’s coat pockets. What sort of beautiful rose-tinted world did the woman live in?" - Rose learns a painful, but important lesson while travelling through dimensions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chiron

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, dear people! This little crossover was written in response to Time Petals's Prompts ficlet prompt to the lyrics of "Penny's Song" from "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog". The lyrics just resonated something deeper that is present in both stories, and I wanted to explore a bit of the ideas behind what Penny says and believes. So here we find Rose right in the middle of her efforts to find the Doctor, running from Dimension to Dimension, and having a rough time of it overall... I hope you enjoy it.

_“Here’s a story of a girl_  
Who grew up lost and lonely  
Thinking love was fairytale  
And trouble was made only for me

_Even in the darkness_  
Every colour can be found  
And every day of rain  
Brings water flowing  
To things growing in the ground. “ 

_Penny’s Song – Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog._

Rose woke up with a terrible headache and absolutely no idea where she was or what had happened to her. It wasn’t the first time that she had passed out in her months of dimension-hopping, so she overcame her first instincts to jump to her feet immediately and tried to take in her surroundings.

The splitting headache was the most noticeable, but not the only injury she seemed to be sporting at the moment. Behind the pounding waves in her temples her ribs felt raw and burned, along with a vicious ache along her back. The shrapnel wound in her knee was acting up again and her joints felt heavy and tender, but she was so used to these she barely registered it. No heavy bleeding or broken bones, it seemed. She was lucky this time.

Extending her awareness outwards, she took in the still air and muffled sounds of her surroundings. She was either deafened (again), or in a quiet place. Her back was resting against a lumpy, but relatively soft surface, covered by some scratchy material that felt like wool. This was most unusual, and made her alarmed – this was not the usual back alley or rocky ground in the woods.

Memories trickled back to her had along with the pins and needles in her temples. It was her fifth – or maybe even sixth – jump in succession, and the place where she had landed in showed no sign of the Universe ending, stars covered by pollution and not sucked into non-existence. But the temporal interference in that particular place was enough to draw her instruments to its source. She remembered hours of tracking the signal and sneaking into a small flat, only to find a smart blond wanker who had managed to freeze time with some home-made tool.

In another, softer time, she would imagine what the Doctor would say, commenting on his excellent jiggery-pokery skills or offering some engineering insight that was incomprehensible to anyone but the most genially disturbed minds. But not now. It just hurt too much to have him in her head, filling the endless silences with thoughts that didn’t come close to the solace of hearing his voice.

This Rose – awake for 72 hours straight, racing against the end of the universe and having seen unspeakable horrors along her journey – only cared about one thing. She needed to look at the temporal technology the weird villain-wannabe had invented, and determine whether it could help her get to the Doctor. There was no time or patience on her part to hear that man’s ramblings in his computer, or the sadness with which he hid his eyes behind the safety goggles when he worked.

Among the incredibly useless amount of information that he supplied in his long monologues in front of the camera, Rose found out about his plans to use his temporal device, which would allow her the perfect opportunity for her to steal his technology and jump right back to Torchwood.

She remembered tailing the man from a distance, her eyes so keen on his device that she didn’t notice the unmarked vans filled with law agents, nor the ridiculous muscled man wearing a hammer-themed t-shirt.

When the whole operation was foiled by the police (and a man who wore huge black rubber gloves for some unknown reason), Rose tried to snatch away the temporal capsule inside the device, only to be knocked back by a huge explosion caused by the gas tank of a car which was thrown at the goggles-wearing guy she was tailing.

She remembered hitting her back on a brick wall and being thrown to the asphalt ground  – hence her current injuries – and this could only mean…

Panic gripped her insides. She was moved somewhere. Captured? Imprisoned? In a hospital? Throwing caution to the wind, Rose opened her eyes and sprang up, determined to escape as soon as possible. But the world swayed to the side, distorting her line of vision and causing her to stumble before the blurry shapes in front of her tried to settle into a definite form.

“Hey! Calm down, it’s ok, you’re safe,” a soft voice came through from afar, while a pair of warm hands settled around her arms, guiding her back to a sitting position.

“I’mna hospital?,” Rose groaned, weakly trying to get up again. “I can’t…”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have the money to pay any hospital bills, so I had to bring you to my place and did the best I could.” It was a woman’s voice, still distorted but undeniably gentle, like the hands that slowly guided her shoulders back to a horizontal position.

“Rest now. You’re safe.”

She wasn’t safe. None of them were. The universe was dying, the Doctor could be _anywhere_ (could be hurt, could be lost, could be _dead_ ) and she had no time to lose. She had to get up, she had to leave, she had to-

Kind hands adjusted the covers around Rose’s shivering body, softly stroking her arm over the covers in a comforting manner, and tears sprung to her eyes.  She hadn’t slept in almost four days, no sign of the Doctor anywhere, and she left the last pocket universe she’d been in while everything around her burned. It had been weeks since she had last been touched by anyone, and even longer since that touch had been to comfort, and not to-

Darkness fell over her senses, the faint ringing of the kind voice still in her mind.

 

* * *

 

 

Under normal circumstances Rose would have quickly thanked the woman for her kindness and slipped away the first opportunity she got. But this was her third concussion of the month, and it was hard to stand up without the world suddenly tilting sideways – not a good thing if she wanted to make a jump back home without splitting her body in half, or landing in the middle of traffic and being hit by a passing car (again).

She could try to sneak out and recover at some secluded part of the city, but as soon as she showed signs of being awake again, the smell of vegetable soup filled her senses, reminding her of the many hours since she had last eaten anything.

“Thank you so much for the soup,” Rose said as she wolfed it down. “You didn’t need to make it for me”.

“Oh, I didn’t make it.” Her voice was soft, almost meek. “I volunteer at the homeless shelter, so I asked to bring home something for you…”

The woman sat down beside her bed, so much softness and sympathy in her eyes that it made Rose want to run as far as possible from there. Getting involved with people in all those dimensions was simply the worst idea of all. When the stars were dying out, there was nothing she could do for the despair of the inhabitants of dying planets. Some of them lived in pocket universes or alternative realities that would just fade away in a minute. For all the rest, a lost girl with scrappy technology wasn’t bound to make much of a difference – they needed the Doctor, and there was nothing Rose could do without finding him first. Judging by the temporal disturbances happening in the place she was at, there was a possibility that Penny and her soulful eyes might disappear in the blink of an eye – and Rose knew better than to get attached.

She didn’t have much time for kindness.

The big irony of the situation is that Rose was fighting precisely for that long-lost softness – for the Valiant Child that had died in the bloody battle that was her life since she lost him.She could remember a time she when she was so full of wonder at the stars in front of her, connecting with people, when she didn’t feel as broken as the fabric of reality. So she ran, punching holes through the universes to get the Doctor back so he could make her whole again, for him to make a gentler world possible…

For now, all she could do was come up with some washed-up version of her struggles and hope her head cleared up enough for her to go back home to lick her wounds in peace.

 

* * *

 

Her name was Penny, and she was the most gullible person in the Multiverse. Auburn hair, thin and pale, and big bright eyes shining with empathy, as if she wanted to cure all the sadness in the world with a blanket and warm soup. She brought a stranger into her house. She _dragged_ an unconscious stranger home. She had let an unconscious _armed_ stranger sleep on the same space as her. And she had absolutely no idea because she didn’t even bother to check Rose’s coat pockets. What sort of beautiful rose-tinted world did the woman live in?

Rose didn’t even need to hear her story to get the picture: tiny but comfortable flat, most likely decorated by Penny herself with colourful patterns and paper flowers, cute and comfortable clothes and time enough to spend it all at volunteering at a homeless shelter. One could even say it wasn’t so different from the life Rose had before the Doctor took her to the stars: boring job, tiny flat and an unassuming life. So, instead of  being whisked away through time and space in a police box, Penny reached to those less fortunate than her to put some meaning into her life, to give herself a tangible mission, a worthy purpose so she wouldn’t drown between her shifts at the store and visits to the laundromat.

“So…,” she asked, as soon as Rose finished eating her second serving. “What happened to you? You don’t seem to be from around here…”

Rose began the already familiar process of lying through her teeth, with just enough of the truth to evoke emotion, watering down her journey of alternate realities and impending doom of the universe with the prosaic search for a missing friend. But those bloody empathetic eyes, the almost pathetic openness with which she clung to every word Rose said, as if she was something special, as if everyone in this world was important... The most tender and painful truths started slipping from her cleaned up version: the dear friend that she was in love with, who had showed her the stars. The wonders, the adventure and the heartache that came when they were torn apart. The hopelessness of her travels now, trying to find a needle in a haystack of multiversal proportions. Rose’s voice faltered in the middle of a sentence, and she only realised she was crying when Penny handed her a tissue.

In return, Penny shared a bit about her life: her job at the local grocery store, her real vocation of volunteering at the shelter, the charming superhero who was taking her out and even her odd friend from the laundry with whom she loved to talk –a mixture of sensations, ideas and dilemmas that made up her little world. It all seemed so alien to Rose, in the end, but at least it distracted her while her headache receded. 

“I know it seems like it’s hopeless now, but… Just having been loved so much is already a blessing.” Penny’s hand was on her shoulder, but there was a hint of concealed pain in her comforting gesture. “Some of us just spend their whole lives without something like that.”

“Surely not you,” Rose said, drying her eyes. “You have so much love to give, how can it be that-“

“Well, it happens,” Penny tried to remain impersonal, but the quiver in her voice betrayed her. “Some people fall through the cracks in life, without a single helping hand to show them the way, and there are few things that hurt more than being forgotten, invisible…,” she trailed off, biting her lip.“This is why I’m so passionate about the homeless people’s condition in this city. I never had it as bad as them, but I _do_ know-”

And then Penny shared her story again, shining a harsh light in the cosy corners of her tiny flat and simple life. She talked about the sensitive artist who couldn’t handle having a child and left. The woman whose alcohol addiction made it progressively impossible to act as a loving mother, and the brave little girl who was thrust into the role of carer so early in her life, under physical and verbal abuse, always hearing about how lucky she was to have a roof over her head. She told Rose about a childhood of learning to knit and sew because she was being bullied about her old, torn clothes. Hanging out around the homeless shelter not only for the food, but because there were a few people who actually talked to her kindly.

Penny hadn’t needed the end of the universe to be broken – just regular humans in a normally functioning Earth, doing what they did best in terms of crushing the life out of their kindest souls. 

And yet…

“So after all of that, I can’t stand seeing other people being abandoned or forgotten. Captain Hammer always worries that I might be too soft with everyone, but if I’m not kind with them, who will be? If it takes a life of being invisible for me to realise it, well… At least something good came of it,” Her spine straightened and her voice  lost all its meekness as she said it, sounding loud and clear, and Rose had to avert her gaze. There was a steely core to Penny’s softness, and suddenly all that seemed gullible and pathetic and weak revealed the greatest type of strength.

 

* * *

 

 

Rose didn’t dare impose on Penny’s hospitality and time for longer after that, but she still had the temporal disturbance to take care of. As soon as the symptoms of her concussion became manageable, Rose fled from the tiny flat and its occupant, thinking it was the last time she would see those wounded, but kind eyes.

How she wished it was true.

How she wished she had stayed to listen more, maybe even help Penny with her volunteering work enough to get to know ‘Billy from the Laundromat’ and recognize him as the blond scientist who caused the temporal disturbance…

How she wished she could have met Captain Hammer at least once and told Penny about Jimmy Stone and the explosive combination of a girl with low self-esteem and an egomaniacal jerk…

And how she wished she would have taken the Doctor’s path and actually _talked_ to Billy - or Dr. Horrible, or whatever title he chose to go by – so she could find out earlier that his inventions were highly unstable before tampering with both of them in search of useful parts…

A more cynical part of her simply wished she would have worked faster, so that all the useful components of Doctor Horrible’s were already gone by the time he decided to use it, so she wouldn’t have to be a witness to his final showdown and the terrible consequences of his weapons malfunctioning…

But what was the point of wishing, now? Penny was dead. This universe, however much time it might have before the stars went out, was a little darker, a little less kind.

And it was all Rose’s fault.

 

* * *

 

 

There wasn’t much time to mourn: the ‘Freeze Ray’ was a few vital pieces short, so the dimension cannon could be upgraded, her own device was fully charged and the cracks through the void were positioned just right for a jump right back home. She wished she could curl up and cry on her bed in Tyler Mansion for a week or so, but the stars were still going out and the Multiverse couldn’t wait on her _feelings_. So she went home, took a shower, slept for as many hours as the nightmares would allow and got ready to jump again.

But the memory of that short conversation – and so many gestures of kindness that were so grossly underappreciated at the time – stayed close to Rose’s heart,  a wound that she vowed to never let heal.Penny’s death had been completely in vain, collateral damage from a stupid battle of egos between two ridiculous men. But if her beautiful way of turning pain into kindness could be salvaged, then maybe, just maybe, Rose wouldn’t have been completely turned into a monster if she finally found the Doctor again.

 

Penny remained her own personal ghost through the years, her brief, but bright presence slowly turning into a song in her mind, a simple, melancholic melody that drifted through her mind like a TARDIS’ touch, a reminder and a threat against the dire indifference that threatened to consume her.

Rose had managed to hold on to her heart in the eye of the hurricane, but being kind and open hearted while reality was burning was bound to leave scars in her body and mind – but the pain of being on her own for so long was precisely what allowed her to really _understand_ what was going through the Doctor’s mind when he woke up screaming next to her – she knew what it felt like to be haunted by the deep loneliness and desperation that came from being the one in charge to save the day.

_“The doctor is effective only when he himself is affected. Only the wounded physician heals.” – C. G. Jung._

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I went there. I quoted junguian archetypes for a weekly ficlet challenge. But how an one /not/ think of the wounded healer while Penny is talking about turning her loneliness in the will to help others? This is what made these lyrics resonate with Doctor Who (or, to be more specific, New Who and the Time War) - how the willingness to help, to save and to heal come from a place of deep hurt and sorrow. The Doctor dislikes war because he was the biggest warrior of them all. The Doctor wants to preserve life because he was unable to do so for his own species. The 12th Doctor's speech in "The Zygon Inversion" is a great example of this - how he wants to avoid war and suffering because he has so much of it on his back already. 
> 
> Anyway, the title of this story may sound strange, but Chiron is actually centaur of greek mythology who represents the wounded healer: he was an immortal being who was wounded by a poisoned arrow, and suffered from immense pain without end. In pursuit of finding a cure for himself, he learned a great deal about the art of medicine, and became a great healer and teacher. It's a figure that is both inspiring and tragic. Tragic in the sense that he can't heal himself or end his agony, but inspiring in the sense that he transformed his pain into a tool that he has to bring relief and healing to so many others. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, and don't hesitate to drop me a line for comments, criticism or just to chat :)


End file.
